


The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati

by scullywolf



Series: TXF: Scenes in Between [142]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Banter, F/M, Guns, Hurt/Comfort, MSR, Missing Scene, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-08-14 12:36:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8014273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scullywolf/pseuds/scullywolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You can't just have a scene change with the words "One Week Later" and *not* expect me to run with it. ;)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_“Mulder, help me. Please, Mulder.”_  
_“You...help...me.”_

Relief bubbles up from her very core, escaping in the form of two hot tears slipping down her cheeks. He's _alive_. She holds him as tightly as she dares for one golden moment, indescribably grateful for his weak but active grip on her shoulder, before the urgency sets back in. She's been so focused on finding him, on getting _to_ him, that she hasn't exactly made a plan for getting him _out_.

A wild glance around the room reveals, blessedly, a wheelchair parked against one wall. _Thank God._ Scully is strong, but not strong enough to carry her incapacitated partner entirely on her own. Even transferring him to the chair will be a challenge, but a manageable one. Carefully, she eases him back down to the table, then pulls the ECG leads off his chest; they’re not hooked up to anything, anyway.

“Hold on, Mulder,” she whispers. “I’m going to get you out of here.”

As quickly and quietly as possible, she retrieves the wheelchair and parks it beside him, fumbling to lock the wheels. Adrenaline gives her the necessary surge of energy to sit him up and slide him into the chair, her arms locked fast around his ribcage as he slumps against her. It’s hardly a textbook transfer, but it’s done, and she hurries them both back to the elevator and out of the building. There’s another dicey transition between the chair and her car, but soon enough they are speeding away. She cycles her gaze between the road ahead, the rearview mirror, and his ashen face.

“I’ve got to get you to a hospital,” she murmurs, even as she worries if anywhere will be safe from the men who did this to him.

“No… hospitals,” he croaks, shaking his head dully. “Just… just you.”

“Mulder, you need imaging scans. I have no way of knowing the extent of the damage. Of knowing what’s been done to you.” She reaches over, running the backs of her fingers from his temple to his chin before finding his arm and squeezing. “I won’t let you out of my sight. Not for one second, okay?”

He puts his hand on top of hers, then closes his eyes, nodding. His head lolls back against the seat, and his arm goes slack, his hand falling back into his lap. Scully reaches up again to find his pulse, thready but present, and presses her foot a little harder on the accelerator.

***

“This is unbelievable.”

The same neurologist who treated Mulder before gestures to the PET scan images on the screen in front of him. On the left is the current reading from the machine; on the right, he’s pulled up Mulder’s scan from the previous week. Scully watches intently over his shoulder, breaking her focus periodically to glance through the window, to put eyes on her partner, needing that reassurance even given the real-time image of his brain on the monitor.

The doctor shakes his head, clicking through the live results as they are generated. “There does not seem to be a single indication of any abnormal activity here. I can’t even begin to explain it. If I didn’t know better, I would say there was no way these scans came from the same patient. A reversal of this magnitude… it’s just unbelievable.”

“His preliminary EEG looked normal, too,” Scully murmurs, standing upright and crossing her arms over her chest. “So whatever was wrong with him before… what, you’re saying it’s over now?”

“For the moment, at least. I can’t speculate as to whether he will suffer a relapse of some sort, not least because I still have no idea what caused his previous condition to begin with. But at this time, I see no evidence of any continued pathology, nor any lasting damage from the trauma his brain has already endured.” He turns around to look at her, his eyebrows raised. “Frankly, I’m more surprised by that than by anything else. He should have severe, permanent brain damage, but there's nothing here. It’s completely baffling.”

Scully nods, unsure how to process the knowledge that Mulder was apparently taken away to be helped, rather than harmed. Given her certainty of who took him, it doesn’t make any sense. 

Then again, it’s not as though she’s sorry to see him cured. Rather emphatically the opposite, in fact.

“At any rate,” the doctor continues, “I’d say he can likely go home as early as tomorrow, barring any complications with that surgical wound on his scalp. For now, let’s get him back to his room to rest.”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

***

He’s been asleep for almost eighteen hours. She has left his side only to use the restroom -- the one right in his hospital room -- and even then, she’s locked his door and shoved a doorstop underneath it on the inside. The doctors and nurses, while perhaps annoyed, don’t dare say anything to her about it, not after everything that’s happened. 

Skinner came by, once. He only stayed long enough to confirm that Mulder will be all right, leaving with a nod and a curt offer that she take as much time as she needs before returning to work. Even understanding why he surveilled them, why he went to Kritschgau and almost got Mulder killed, why he refused to help after Mulder was taken, understanding that his hands were tied and his own life in danger, Scully finds it hard to feel sympathy for the guilt written all over her boss’s face. Oh, she will undoubtedly forgive him eventually, just as she has after each of the previous times he’s worked against them or behaved in ways that have shaken their trust in him. But right now everything is still too raw. Logical comprehension of his reasons doesn’t automatically equate to feeling good about his actions.

Aside from that interruption, and the occasional visits from hospital staff, it has been a very quiet day, one that she has sorely needed. She can’t seem to stop letting her eyes roam appreciatively over Mulder’s face, relaxed in sleep. He’s still hooked up to an EEG -- his doctors want 24 hours of normal results before they’ll release him -- and she watches the patterns as he cycles in and out of REM. At times, it is difficult to stay awake herself, Mulder’s quiet breathing the only sound in the room for long periods. She doesn’t want to leave him unguarded, though, so she keeps herself alert by telling him about Africa, about what she found and didn’t find, about the locusts and the craft and the vanishing man. She whispers to him until the fatigue recedes again, even though he’s sleeping deeply enough that she probably could speak aloud without waking him.

And then, after twenty hours, his eyes finally blink open, and a smile breaks across Scully’s face.

“Hi,” she says softly. “How are you feeling?”

“Like Rip van Winkle.” His voice is rough from disuse, and he swallows before trying again. “How long was I out?”

“The better part of a day. You’ll probably be running a sleep deficit for a while, yet, after everything you’ve been through.” She stands and gently pulls back the edge of the bandage ringing his head. “No sign of infection, and minimal swelling, considering you’ve undergone a fairly invasive procedure. Outwardly, everything looks good. Remarkably good, in fact.” 

“What can I say? I’ve always been a fast healer,” he jokes, as if that alone could explain the astounding nature of his recovery. He closes his eyes, brow furrowed slightly in concentration, then gives an almost imperceptible shake of his head. “Nothing. All quiet on the western front.”

“You mean the voices you were hearing before?”

“Thoughts. I could hear… see… I don’t know how, but the symbols on that artifact gave me some kind of telepathic ability.”

She doesn’t disbelieve him, exactly. She’s fully aware of the extent to which his brain was operating in unprecedented ways. But it’s still shocking. “Mulder, that’s--”

“Kritschgau verified it, Skinner witnessed it. I heard _you_ , Scully. When you came to see me before. When you told me to hold on. I heard the things you didn’t say out loud.”

She looks down, an involuntary flush creeping over her cheeks. She had been so afraid for him, so desperately scared of losing him, that her thoughts had surely been something along the lines of _I love you, don’t leave me, I love you, don’t leave me, I love you_ …

His hand finds hers and squeezes, lightly. When she dares to meet his gaze, he simply nods, the softness in his eyes and smile rendering words unnecessary. With a shaky breath, she smiles back.


	2. Chapter 2

It hadn't felt like a dream -- the house in the suburbs, the life he built for himself there. From the moment Scully woke him up in that lab, up until he passed out in her car, Mulder struggled to comprehend that he was not in fact a ninety year-old man on his deathbed. He kept staring at his hands, at the backs of them, incongruously smooth and strong, and wondering how they could really be his. Later, as he lay in the PET scanner at the hospital, flashes of the dream kept coming back to him, and he had trouble distinguishing them from genuine memories. A long stretch of proper sleep, however, seems to have set things right in his brain, and in the clear light of consciousness, he can finally see how unbelievable it all was. Deep Throat and Samantha, alive and well and living down the street, Sunday breakfasts with CGB Spender… and none of that is even the most ridiculous part.

The idea that he could ever, in a million years, turn his back on Scully is nothing short of absurd. As wonderful as it would be to find his sister, to live a life free of monsters and conspiracies, the void left by Scully’s absence would be unbearable. That he could possibly give up on her, on them, falling instead into Diana’s arms with only the barest hesitation, is simply inconceivable. Only a dream has that sort of power, the power to render mundane something so outrageous. 

The longer he is awake, the more that other life fades away, and the more his true memories come back to him. The hell of his time in the psychiatric care unit. The all-too-brief periods of lucidity, sandwiched between hours and days of agonizing mental overload. 

The gift of hearing Scully’s voice ringing in his head, telling him she loves him.

Looking up at her now, even with the blessed silence in his mind, that sentiment is no less present in the way she looks at him. But there is something else in her eyes, too. This case, and everything that went along with it, has taken its toll on her as well. He doesn’t know when she slept last, but judging by the exhaustion in her face, it’s been a while. 

“You should go home and get some sleep, Scully. I’ll be fine here.”

She shakes her head with a frown. “I’m not leaving you alone. You had guards on your room before and you _still_ went missing.”

“Yeah, but this time they’ll be able to hear me when I say no.”

A look of pain crosses her face, and she shakes her head again. “I’m fine, Mulder. I wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway, not knowing if you were safe.”

The doctor arrives, then, to begin evaluating him for discharge. It's a tedious process, one that takes well over an hour to complete and wears him out to the point that he is ready to go back to sleep. But once his charts have been reviewed and he has demonstrated the (surprising even to him) ability to stand and even walk with minimal assistance, the doctor signs off on his release, and they give him back the clothes he had on when he came to the hospital the first time. By this point, Scully can barely keep her eyes open, and he manages to convince her to call for a cab instead of trying to drive him home. While they wait for it to arrive, he has another thought.

“Scully, I don't mean this how it sounds, but maybe we should go back to your place.” She blinks at him in sleepy confusion. “It's just so much closer. If we have to go all the way to Alexandria, I’m gonna lay very strong odds on both of us falling asleep in the cab.”

Raising her eyebrows, she nods. “My apartment _is_ only a few blocks from here. I can’t believe I didn’t think of that myself. Okay, yeah. We’ll do that.”

He finds it hard to stay awake anyway, even on the short cab ride, and he ends up leaning on Scully more than he means to as they make their way slowly to her front door. There’s no discussion about who will sleep where; they both bypass the couch and fall into her bed, pausing only long enough to kick off their shoes. 

“Thanks for saving me,” Mulder murmurs into the darkness, just before sleep overtakes him. “Again.”

***

He wakes the next morning to a raging headache and the smell of coffee brewing. It takes him a minute to remember where he is, remember why his head feels like it was used in a very long game of pinball. Groaning, he sits up slowly, pausing to let his equilibrium adjust before carefully pushing himself to standing. He wavers for a second but stays upright, then shuffles out to the kitchen, where he finds Scully dressed and sitting at the table, reading the newspaper. 

She looks up in surprise when he sits down across from her. “I didn’t hear you get up. How are you?”

“I guess whatever pain meds they gave me at the hospital wore off, because my head hurts like a sonofabitch.” He resists the urge to rub his forehead, wincing and clenching his fist instead. “Have you got anything I can take?”

She gets up from the table. “Yeah, the doctor sent you home with Vicodin, remember?” (He doesn’t, but then again, he sort of stopped paying attention after the part where they said he could leave.) She opens a small paper bag on the counter and takes out a pill bottle. “You’re going to want to take these with food, though. Toast and scrambled eggs sound okay?”

It sounds amazing, despite his headache, and it occurs to him that he hasn’t really eaten properly in days. “Yeah, that sounds… better than okay, actually. Thanks, Scully.”

She pours him a glass of orange juice, setting it in front of him with an easy smile, then sets to work making him breakfast. Something about the domesticity of it tugs at his gut. This is hardly the first time she’s taken care of him, his partner the medical doctor, but it feels different somehow. It sparks a mental image of lazy weekend mornings together, cooking for each other after waking up in the same bed, and maybe tumbling back into that bed again after a late breakfast. 

Before this case, before the artifact and its aftermath, they certainly seemed to be on the brink of something with the potential to bring that daydream to life. Hopefully, they will be able to pick up where they left off, once he’s recovered somewhat.

When she sets the plate in front of him, it's all he can do to keep from wolfing down the food so fast he makes himself sick. Simple buttered toast and scrambled eggs don't have any right to taste this good. He pauses only long enough to swallow the two pills she gives him, and despite his best efforts, his plate is empty in less than two minutes. Without comment, Scully takes a slice of toast from her own plate and reaches across the table to place it on his.

“You probably ought to wait a little while before you have any more than that, though,” she says. 

“You got it, doc.” He winks at her, and she looks down, smiling.

He manages to eat the extra piece of toast at a more reasonable pace, noticing as he takes the last bite that the pain in his head has started to recede. He also notices that the pain actually seems to be more external than internal, originating at the wound itself, which is a relief. Once that heals, he should be more or less back to normal pretty quickly. It’s weird to think he may well have his cigarette smoking nemesis to thank for that, and even as he’s grateful to be free of the artifact’s effects, the whole thing makes him more than a little apprehensive about what he may or may not now owe that man.

It must be showing on his face, because when he looks up again at Scully, she’s frowning at him, brow creased with concern. He cocks a half-smile and shakes his head. “Just thinking.”

She nods slowly and glances toward the clock. “I should probably go pick up my car from the hospital. Do you think you’ll be all right here on your own for a little while?”

“Come on, Scully. I’m not a complete invalid.”

“Mulder--”

“Seriously, I’ve been way worse off than this. I’ll be fine, I promise. My head’s feeling a lot better already, but I’m just gonna take it easy, maybe watch some TV, have a nap, be as lazy as humanly possible.”

She looks a little skeptical as she gathers up their plates and puts them in the sink, but she nods again. When she disappears into her bedroom, he gets up and moves over to her couch, setting his glass of orange juice on the coffee table. He sinks into the cushions, his stomach pleasantly full and the pain in his head nearly gone; the combination makes him nicely relaxed and even a little sleepy, which is maybe ridiculous given that he’s been awake for all of half an hour so far today, but he’s just going to roll with it. 

Scully comes back out of her room with her backup weapon in her hand. He raises his eyebrows as she hands it to him.

“You’re still not in any condition to… look, the men who took you, we both know what they’re capable of. And even though you seem to be better now, that doesn’t mean they won’t come back. So… just in case.” 

“Scully, if they wanted me dead, I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you right now. They had plenty of opportunity.”

“Just… humor me? Please?”

He shrugs and sets the gun down next to his juice glass. “All right, but I’m probably going to be asleep anyway. If you’re really that worried, it makes more sense to block the door from the inside, put a chair under the knob or something, don’t you think? Then when you get back, you can give the secret knock, and I’ll let you in.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Secret knock?”

“Come on, Scully, I’ve always wanted to have an excuse for a secret knock.”

She shakes her head, chuckling. “And what exactly is the secret knock?”

“Let’s see…” He stretches a fist toward the coffee table and taps out four steady knocks, then two close together, a pause, then one more. “There. Your turn.”

Grinning wryly at him, she leans down and repeats the pattern. He beams up at her. “Perfect.”


	3. Chapter 3

It takes a few days before she concedes that he’s probably well enough to go back to his own apartment, that he doesn’t absolutely require a doctor’s supervision anymore. She can’t decide whether or not it’s surprising, how easily they’ve slipped into this temporary cohabitation. They’ve both lived alone so long that she sort of expected more tension to arise from having to share her space; then again, they spend so much time together between work and travel, have spent weeks together in quarantine, that a few days and nights is practically no time at all, in comparison. 

That they’ve continued sharing her bed after that first night, while very deliberately ignoring that fact, is perhaps a little more remarkable. What began as an exercise in practicality hasn’t _really_ been necessary after the first night, but any potential awkwardness has been mediated by the circumstances. She’s been in full professional mode, and while she _could_ just as well sleep out on the couch, it hasn’t felt like either of them has needed the distance buffer. Besides, he’s still been sleeping a fair bit in general, so it’s not as if they’ve had to do the tense “settle down and try to go to bed at the same time” thing.

Also, she’d be lying if she said the past few nights of sleep weren’t the most restful she’s had in a while.

Still, as tempting and easy as it might be to let this temporary situation evolve into something more, there is no external justification for it. Someone would find out, see something, say something, and it would get back to the wrong people at the FBI. Skinner might be willing to look the other way, but there are still plenty of higher-ups in the Bureau looking for any excuse to shut down the X-Files for good or split them up permanently.

So she takes him home, but that doesn’t stop her from coming by often, ostensibly to continue monitoring his recovery. (In reality, he’s still healing almost unbelievably well and far faster than he should be.) She keeps using the “secret” knock, if for no other reason than to provoke the delighted grin with which he answers the door. He does tire easily, so they mostly sit quietly together, watching movies or the occasional baseball game. She tells him everything she went through -- again, since he was asleep the last time -- to find a cure, to find _him_. 

When she tells him about Albert Hosteen, the conversation derails for twenty minutes into a debate over whether she actually, physically saw him or experienced some sort of supernatural “visitation.” Even though it annoys her that he won’t accept her version of events, it feels like a return to normalcy for the first time since all of this began. It makes her exceedingly grateful for everything she could have lost, but didn’t. Grateful that he’s not only still alive, but that he’s still _Mulder_.

Her first day back at the office, she stops by afterward with Chinese takeout and a rented copy of _Spaceballs_. (He’d made an appalled face at her admission the day before that she’s never seen it.) They eat on the couch in front of the movie and end up sitting very close together once they’ve set the empty food containers aside. When he shakes with laughter at a particularly funny part, she can feel it all along the right side of her body. The movie’s campy and not really her thing, but watching him get so much enjoyment out of it is worth every line of eye-rollingly bad dialogue.

By the time the final credits roll, she’s warm from sitting up against him, pleasantly relaxed and truly happy. For a moment, she can almost pretend that the traumas of the past week or so were just some kind of nightmare, no more concrete than that. Then she looks over at Mulder, at the bandage still wrapped around his head, and her stomach tightens. No, it was all too real. But at least they’re both on the mend, maybe.

He turns to face her. “A cult classic for the ages. What’d you think?”

“It was… something, yep.”

He scoffs, shaking his head. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those people who thinks parody is the lowest form of comedy.”

“No, it’s just…” She shrugs and gives him a sheepish grin. “Maybe a little?”

“Well, there’s no accounting for taste, I guess.” He leans forward to pick up the remote and click the TV off, and it doesn’t _sound_ like he’s actually offended, but she still wants to somehow convey to him that even if she didn’t love the movie, she _did_ love watching it with him.

“At least I’ve got good taste in company though, right?”

He turns to look at her again, a slow grin breaking across his face. “Oh I don’t know. I think your taste in company might be even more suspect than your taste in movies.”

She laughs, and when she looks back at him there’s a softness in his eyes that makes something flutter in her stomach. His gaze flits down to her lips and settles there, and she licks them involuntarily. Their feelings for each other have been out in the open now for a while, but circumstances have prevented them from acting on those feelings in more serious ways than significant looks or surreptitiously-held hands or kisses pressed tenderly to foreheads. Now, though… now there is nothing stopping them from at least kissing each other properly. His gaze flicks up to meet hers, the question in his eyes. _Are we really, finally, doing this?_ She swallows and tilts her chin in the tiniest of nods. He raises one hand to her cheek, and her heart hammers in her chest as he brings his mouth toward hers with almost excruciating slowness. 

Some not insignificant part of her expects something to stop them, to steal this opportunity from them as well. A door slamming open. A damned bee sting. A--

Her stream of consciousness mental chatter shuts off abruptly as his lips finally brush hers. Her eyes flutter closed, and when she presses forward to meet him, her entire world narrows to the few square centimeters where their mouths are joined. For a second, she doesn’t dare move, doesn’t dare do anything that might break the spell.

And then her hand finds the back of his neck, fingers curling into the short bits of hair below the bandage around his head, and she parts her lips slightly. Slowly, with something like reverence, he deepens the kiss, his hand still cradling her cheek as he changes the angle, brushing his nose against hers and sucking lightly on her bottom lip. It’s a remarkable display of restraint from both of them, the years of want crackling between them without turning into a frenzy. For her part, Scully savors every moment, marvelling at how it feels simultaneously like nothing she’s ever experienced and like coming home after a long, long time away. They _fit_ and it’s _right_ and of course it is. How could it possibly be otherwise?

Finally, she has to pull back to breathe. Mulder leans his forehead against hers and sighs through his nose. The sigh turns into a quiet chuckle. 

“I have wanted to do that for a _really_ long time,” he murmurs.

“Yeah,” she whispers, her head still spinning. “Yeah, me too.”

He pulls away and looks into her eyes, ducking his chin. “Regrets?”

“None whatsoever.”

The smile that breaks across his face makes the whole room seem brighter, and then he’s kissing her again, and she’s kissing him back, and they don’t stop for a very long time. 

***

It’s late when he walks her to the door, hand-in-hand. Her lips are swollen and starting to chap, and her head swims with the knowledge that nothing will be the same after tonight. She looks over at Mulder as she opens the door; he shoots her a lazy grin and squeezes her hand.

“We should do this again sometime.”

She chuckles, looking down and inexplicably blushing. “I’d like that.”

He drops her hand as she walks over the threshold into the hallway, but when she turns around to face him and say a last goodnight, he leans in as if to kiss her again. She pulls back, eyes wide with a nervous glance toward the elevator. When she looks back at him, his eyebrows are raised in question.

“Someone could--”

“See? In the empty hallway inside my apartment building? Scully, I’m no stranger to paranoia, but that’s taking things maybe a bit too far, don’t you think?”

She frowns and lowers her voice to a whisper. “I thought we agreed, just behind closed doors. We start making exceptions, and then one day we’re gonna slip and--”

“The world as we know it will come crashing down around our ears?” He smirks, and she would find it infuriating if she didn’t also find it completely adorable. 

“Mulder…”

He grabs her shoulders and plants a kiss on her forehead. When she looks up at him, his smirk has softened to a genuine smile. “While I may not agree with you about the severity of any potential repercussions, I’ll respect the ground rules. Wouldn’t want you to change your mind about the rest of it, would I?”

As if she could. As if she could go back to a life of working side by side with him, day after day, forever in his orbit but never to collide. Now that she knows, definitively, what is possible between them. Yeah, right.

But she smiles her thanks anyway. “Good night, Mulder.”

“Good night, Scully.”

***

When Skinner calls her at home the next morning, to tell her that Agent Fowley was apparently shot in her apartment overnight, Scully’s first reaction is one of shock. This is followed quickly by guilt. She put it together a few days earlier that Fowley was the one who’d sent her the book and slipped the access card under her door. She’s been meaning to thank her, to apologize for the way their last exchange ended. But of course she hasn’t actually done it, and now she’s lost the opportunity forever. 

“Does Mulder know?” she asks Skinner, once she’s recovered her voice.

“No, I thought it best to call you first. I didn’t want to upset him, given his condition.”

Upon consideration, she decides it is probably for the best that he get the news in person anyway. “I’ll tell him. Thank you, sir.”


End file.
